340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Gold depreciation accentuates the injustice of the present economic 

 system of production and distribution in many ways; it causes prices 

 to rise much faster than wages and salaries. It causes high interest 

 rates and low prices for bonds and securities with fixed incomes; it 

 causes land values to rise abnormally fast and thus results in giving 

 the landlords of the earth a larger share of the world's goods ; it causes 

 wealth to concentrate even more rapidly than it would otherwise do; 

 it makes business a gamble and increases speculation ; it causes the cost 

 of operation of railroads and of other public service corporations to 

 advance more rapidly than rates and fares. In these and in many 

 other ways gold depreciation increases unearned and, therefore, de- 

 creases earned increments. It is a most powerful revolutionary force 

 in commerce, politics and society, and operates to increase discontent 

 and radicalism. 



Knowing of the injustice of our present economic system and see- 

 ing how this injustice was accentuated by gold depreciation, which was 

 expected to continue for many years, I, nine years ago, in Moody's 

 Magazine, made some predictions, about all of which have since been 

 substantiated by facts. One of these was that, because of increasing 

 costs of operation, the situation of our railroads would become so des- 

 perate that public sentiment would permit rates to be advanced. Another 

 prediction was that the evils of gold depreciation would so disturb in- 

 dustrial and political conditions that overturns, wars, etc., would result. 



Never, perhaps, in any previous period of the world's history were 

 so many important, and frequently revolutionary, changes under way as 

 at the present time. In former periods, we have had religious, politi- 

 cal, governmental, commercial, financial and industrial changes at dif- 

 ferent times. To-day, that is, during the present decade, we see most 

 important, even if sometimes silent, changes under way in all directions. 



The present European cataclysm can not but result in gi'eat changes, 

 governmentally and politically, and probably also industrially. Eepu- 

 diation of debts, both public and private, is not only a possibility but a 

 probability. Many European countries and cities were, by experts, con- 

 sidered to be hopelessly in debt at the beginning of the war. The 

 billions and scores of billions of additional debts will almost necessitate 

 repudiation. There is, in my opinion, only one possible escape from 

 wholesale repudiation of public debt, at least by the losing countries, 

 and that is through the public appropriation of the unearned increment 

 from land. But the taking of land value for public purposes will depre- 

 ciate land values to almost nothing, and will necessitate the repudia- 

 tion of the billions of dollars of private and mortgage indebtedness in 

 continental Europe, under the heavy load of which the masses of peasant 

 farmers are now but little better than feudal slaves. 



I hope that the Kockefeller Foundation, in its search for the causes 



